OT: Neil Young wants you to truly hear the music

[William]

Neil Young wants you to truly hear the music you listen to. Over the years, the trend in audio has prioritized convenience over quality. Last week at SXSW, I had a conversation with Neil Young about an idea he has to change that trend. In this interview, he talks about Pono, the new audio player he's been helping develop. Just before the interview, I spent time listening to Pono. It's impressive. Pono translates from Hawaiian to mean righteous, and the intent is to honor recorded music and get it into the hands of fans without compromising the sound.

The player is about the size of your hand and triangular in shape, with a few buttons to adjust the volume and start and stop a song. There's a small screen that will let you see what's playing and swipe to see other screens. Along with the player, there will be a Pono store that allows you to buy the highest quality version of the music available, in whatever form the "master" recordings of a song or album are stored. The player and the store are scheduled to launch in the fall....

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/03/19/291130878/neil-young-wants-you-to-truly-hear-music



Pono vs iTunes?








William

[witcombusa]

A Southern man don't need him around anyhow...

[William]

A Southern man don't need him around anyhow...

After looking it over....I'm thinking they may change their mind.:p

http://www.ponomusic.com/#home








William

[echelon_john]

In terms of Lynrd Skynrd Fynrd, I'd rather hear LESS of the music...not more.

[Anarchist]

this is Neil Young and whoever signes up for his service looking to sell yet another copy of their music to whatever poor schlubs decide to buy their tracks.

[echelon_john]

This is about audio quality, if you read the fine print. Alternate proposal?

[Mr. Pink]

What? What did Neil say?

[Steve in SLO]

This sounds like a very cool proposition. If they can deconstruct the digital sound to make it sound more analog, it would be a great thing to hear. I only hope that they do not have as much compression as MP3s have. It would be lovely to hear more headroom and silence in music.

[thwart]

In terms of Lynrd Skynrd Fynrd, I'd rather hear LESS of the music...not more.
+100.

Pre-crash… great band. Post-crash (especially the past 10 yrs)… not.

[lonoeightysix]

Uncle Neil was on letterman awhile back, talking about this.

[bewheels]

He/they might be missing the fact that 99% of people listening to music don't really care. Or 99% of music systems that people consume music with will not output the music in a way that you could ever notice (think poor speakers).

This is not really that off topic for a forum in which people talk about handmade bikes...esentually the 1 percenters of the cycling world.

BTW this is not said with any attitude. I have owned hand built speakers and hand built frames. Thoroughly enjoyed both and realize that I am not the norm in these areas.

[Duende]

The Pomo player uses high quality digital to analog convertors and includes circuitry to minimize jitter and ringing artifacts that occur due to phase distortion

All good things, and a pragmatic step forward in audio fidelity. But ultimately not a solution to the real problem. Which is that all are digital recordings are based on PCM sampling technology.

Records and tapes may have high noise floors and frequency curves filled with bumps, dips, and roll-off. But at least the audio captured is a direct electro-mechanical 1:1 process. And not dissected into malleable pieces... Stored.. and then somehow perfectly time-aligned and recomposited back together.

DSD and SACD was the solution. But Phillips and Sony killed it, because they already had a fixed market based on their crappy PCM tech.

End of rant.

Love Neil. Nothing but admiration for the man.

[slidey]

Pono player has been on my radar for around a year now, but unfortunately I'm unable to see how it can gain traction with the general audience anytime soon.

Creating an entire music ecosystem for one skew (very high resolution music) is taking on iTunes head-on in a remarkably naive way (capital intensive, music label dependent, audience adoption dependent, etc). The labels need to sign on (no one's signed on yet, have they?) to release albums at such high resolution for the Ponostore to ever have any Ponomusic, and estimates today place the value of one Ponomusic album at $15-25, which is a wild ass guess really. Furthermore, streaming of Ponomusic is/won't be supported in the near future but with more and more people streaming music (even music they own), that market is already shut before they've taken off. Finally, and critically I'm not convinced there is even a need for this Ultra high resolution quality music. How many of us really can tell a difference between the two fiel formats, and even if we could tell the difference how many of us would bother to pay the cost of switching? So by my reading this is more of a niche product for the "golden ears", or the musicians, etc.

Adore Neil Young's music, but can't be bothered with this.

[William]

I’m not a hardcore audiophile so I’m not up on all the terminology, but like the Matrix, I know there is something missing…something I can’t quite explain yet I know it’s (not) there. To Neil’s point: I remember first listening to the Dark Side of the Moon and Fragile on vinyl and I was blown away by the rich dynamic sounds coming out of those speakers. It wasn’t even a real high-end stereo for its time, I would call it mid-level. I can still recall those sensations of listening to it over and over. Not long ago I tried listening to the DSOM thru iTunes and I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed by it. It was the same music, but something was missing. That rich texture and vibrancy was missing. If Pono can re-capture that, then I think they’re on to something. Whether the public can appreciate or are willing to buy into it is another matter






William

[William]

Sorry Neil, it looks like the Paceline audiophiles are not onboard.:(









:D

William

[cash05458]

"The Pomo player uses high quality digital to analog convertors"

while that sounds like a cool idea, and it may be...it would still be a translation Back to a semblance of analog...this would really come down to how the original was recorded...old stuff was all analog of course...almost all new crap is pure digital...and even on the older stuff, my feeling is that something would be lost in that translation BACK to that sound and onto a digital system if you see what I mean...analog will sound best as pure analog with no translations from either directions if that makes sense...I like the idea tho...

[cash05458]

This idea of being able to buy the "master" of the recording...that seems abit fuzzy to me...a Master is nothing other than your finished product...you have your tapes...you mix them...come up with final mixes...and then make a final tape and that is your master...then it is sent for another process (in the old days) to be put on plastic...a plastic master...when you look at old records alot of them will have a little note on inside of plastic ring as to who "mastered" it onto the final process at the record plant...something gets lost abit there as well and people can tweak that in different ways, just as they can while sending say to a cd master......but a master is nothing other than your final product as said...and how it gets put out involves all sorts of audio loss in some way or other...whether that be digital or analog...having recorded albums in all sorts of manners...to me, the best way to record and put down the actual sound is analog...and then it sounds great when going to digital or analog...less is lost I think via analog...but it is very minor...and the differences are wildly exaggerated...even pure digital recording and straight into digital has it's benefits...I think it misses some of the warmth of the instruments and sounds abit neutral...but I also think that can be abit subjective...

[carlineng]

Interesting product, admirable goals, but I don't see it being successful. The casual portable music player market (iPod, Zune, etc.) has been obliterated by smartphones. The messaging on the website doesn't look geared much towards audiophiles, who are not a large market to begin with.

[daker13]

This idea of being able to buy the "master" of the recording...that seems abit fuzzy to me...a Master is nothing other than your finished product...you have your tapes...you mix them...come up with final mixes...and then make a final tape and that is your master...

I think the idea is, you can make a high resolution digital quality transfer of the production master (if it was actually recorded to tape; now, many albums will be recorded to straight to hard drive), and theoretically--bits being bits--consumers should be able to buy an exact copy (though this isn't really the right word) of that digital transfer. So you would effectively be able to buy the highest resolution of the material possible, identical to what the engineers were listening to in the booth--pretty cool.

I don't know how many on the list are jazz heads, but Paul Bley used to own a label, and the lps included an insert saying that you could buy a reel-to-reel copy of the production master for a hundred bucks or something.

I used to be quite an analog fan, but I've finally made my peace with cds and think many of them sound pretty good… still can't stand MP3's, though.

[cash05458]

I think the idea is, you can make a high resolution digital quality transfer of the production master (if it was actually recorded to tape; now, many albums will be recorded to straight to hard drive), and theoretically--bits being bits--consumers should be able to buy an exact copy (though this isn't really the right word) of that digital transfer. So you would effectively be able to buy the highest resolution of the material possible, identical to what the engineers were listening to in the booth--pretty cool.

I don't know how many on the list are jazz heads, but Paul Bley used to own a label, and the lps included an insert saying that you could buy a reel-to-reel copy of the production master for a hundred bucks or something.

I used to be quite an analog fan, but I've finally made my peace with cds and think many of them sound pretty good… still can't stand MP3's, though.


yeah, I know and you are right...it would be the highest quality piece you could get BIT wise...certainly...I like it for that idea as well...all I am saying is that something always gets lost...certainly going from analog to digital...a reel to reel copy would actually be as close as you could get...provided you had a reel to reel machine...but that would be your purest form via analog recordings in the old days...but I think something is missing here as a player ect...you can buy higher bit sound quality...but there are always limitations within that medium of it being played back if you see what I mean...i.e...it is still changing formats and going to digital...coming from analog...and believe me, I am no analog snob and personally think way too much is made outta it...a few years ago a record company brought out 25th aniv. records of an old band of mine so I worked on that project with a good engineer for quite awhile...we had the original master reel to reel tapes...to me, no more loss occurred by going into digital via that transfer than happened on the originals going to plastic...none that I could hear...and any sort of neutral quality could be overdriven in the mastering if the enginner knows what he is doing...so still, it went into digital...so I can't really see the idea of this player...I can see it as an idea...but in reality...I can't see it bringing much to the table...maybe I am wrong...

[Tony T]

Neil's already raised $4.5 million so far on Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-where-your-soul-rediscovers-music)
(I don't think it's worth it. If I'm listening to a portable player, or in a car, then there is a lot of ambient noise. If I'm listening at home, then I'll play Vinyl or Blu-Ray)
…but I wish him well, won't hurt anyone to have another choice, and at worst, it'll raise the quality of what's available on iTunes (with increased bandwidth and increased storage, Apple should be offering a choice of Lossless tracks. Since they don't I'll continue to buy Vinyl or CD's and rip and FLAC and convert to mp3 for the road)

[19wisconsin64]

As a long term audiophile, I think this player is part of a very good trend going towards higher quality sound. Higher quality sound uses a much higher sampling rate, and by doing this you can clearly hear voices and instruments as they were recorded. It's going to carry over to other devices and become mainstream, such as portable smart phones.

We are now at a point in technology where lots of musical information can be stored in a very small space in a cost-effective way. This player/service is one of many that exist now and will be coming down the line.

The term "revelatory" comes to mind. It's that much of an improvement over CD sound.

...... now, if I can just convince my wife to let me sell my small floor standing speakers and put in some proper Magnepans...... "they as big as doors...NO"....."but honey........."

[Md3000]

The trend towards a better audio experience is commendable, but besides having high quality files as your source you also need decent reproduction, ie. good speakers or headphones. This thing looks like it's aimed at the portable music player market, which makes me wonder who will buy this AND walk around town with giant $400 audiophile headphones ?

[19wisconsin64]

here's one source: http://www.hdtracks.com

just listening to the samples on this website gives you a window on how much better the higher definition audio tracks sound, even through any old cheap computer speakers or headphones. it's like the difference between watching an older color television (the kind with the knobs you turn) vs. the modern 4K wide screen 70" sets. you'll hear all that you've been missing.

hopefully the much higher fidelity digital tracks will become standard sooner, rather than later. it's a shame people are paying so much ( a dollar a song) for so little quality when they buy music on iTunes. (sorry apple, you've got to do better for customers)

[rnhood]

Here is a good balanced article on the subject matter. I tend to agree that audio quality to a large extent depends on the actual recording techniques, equipment and mastering. I have standard CDs that sound superb, and ones that sound terrible.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57620489-93/sound-bite-despite-ponos-promise-experts-pan-hd-audio/

[christian]

The trend towards a better audio experience is commendable, but besides having high quality files as your source you also need decent reproduction, ie. good speakers or headphones.

Right. I listen to music on a portable player in two scenarios: on the train commute to the office and on the trainer. Until it can magically filter out the sounds of the railcar ("First six cars open at Pleasantville!") and the thrum-thrum-sqweak of the trainer, I'm not sure higher fidelity in a portable player is what I'm looking for.

[Ti Designs]

just listening to the samples on this website gives you a window on how much better the higher definition audio tracks sound, even through any old cheap computer speakers or headphones.

What's your point of reference when you speak of higher definition audio? I ran into this issue a number of years ago when I wanted a real piano but couldn't fit what I really wanted in my house, so I looked at stage pianos. The sales person at the music store told me the best stage pianos have the best sound samples and sound exactly like the real thing. Companies like Native Instruments told me the same thing. Problem was, I was comparing the real thing to their samples, and it wasn't even close. My take-away from this is that portable devices have lowered your expectation of audio. I guess that's a good thing, if you can be happy with the new standard...